Video: 12-Year-Old Shares Her Journey with Cancer

This is what true grace looks like. Before you read on, grab a tissue.

Twelve-year-old cancer patient Talia Joy Castellano has been taping herself to create her popular video blog, Make-Up is My Wig, where she’s shared beauty tips with more than 100,000 YouTube subscribers, mostly without a wig to hide her bald head.

A few days ago, she posted a different kind of video. “It will be the most serious,” she says. It is.

She tells viewers that her doctors say that she now has two cancers in her body: Neuroblastoma, the cancer she has been battling for five years, and now pre-leukemia in her bone marrow. Without many treatment options available, her doctor wanted to do a bone marrow transplant, but warned that it would be the hardest thing she has done and may not even help in the end.

Talia has been through multiple rounds of chemo, radiation, blood transfusions, stem cell transplants and other surgeries—“more than any kid should have to go through, more than anything an adult should go through,” she says.

At almost thirteen, she has been given the right to decide her fate, and she has decided against the transplant.

“This is not fair to me anymore,” she says. “I hope you understand what I’m saying and understand where I'm coming from.”

While, as she puts it, “cancer sucks,” she has perspective far beyond her years. “Having cancer has been an amazing yet horrible journey but every journey has an end.”

“Everyone asks me if I’m scared,” she says. “I’m definitely scared but I also know that I’m on a low-dose chemo that’s supposed to help both cancers, so it will keep me stable for a little bit.” She is looking forward to her birthday August 18th, and the big party that they’ll have at her house.